Well, that ought to keep the silly bitch happy, he thought, lying back with his hands behind his head, the cigarette held between lightly clenched lips. Thump them until they yelled for mercy, then they had no right to complain or criticize. How long that took didn’t matter to him. He could keep it up all night if he had to. He despised the act, he despised them, he despised himself. The act was a tool, the tool of the tool between his legs, but he had vowed long ago never to be the tool of either. Always the operator. He was master, they were servants, and the only people he couldn’t bend to his will were those like Langtry who felt no tug toward servants or master. God, what he wouldn’t give to see Langtry down on her knees, begging and pleading for any and all of them, servants and master.…

He glanced at his watch, saw that it was after half-past nine. Time to go or he would be late in, and he was not about to give Langtry the satisfaction of reporting him to Colonel Chinstrap. Reaching out, he gave the reclining figure near him a neat slap on her bottom.

‘Come on, love, I’ve got to go. It’s late.’

He assisted her into her clothes with the scrupulous attention to detail of a ladies’ maid, kneeling to lace up her boots, buckle her gaiters. He dusted her down, twitched the grey bush jacket into place, did up its belt and adjusted the set of her slouch hat to his satisfaction. His own clothes were wet in places from the sea, but he slid into them indifferently.

Then he walked with her to the boundary of the sisters’ blocks, his hand beneath her elbow to guide her through the darkness with an impersonal care she found infuriating.

‘Will I see you again?’ she asked when he stopped.

He smiled. ‘You certainly will, my love.’

‘When?’

‘In a few days. We can’t make the pace too fierce or we’ll be nobbled. I’ll come to pay my respects to you on the verandah outside your mess, and we’ll arrange something then. All right?’

She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek self-consciously, then commenced the last lap home on her own.

He changed immediately into a cat, went slipping off into the gloom, skirting the patches of light, keeping well alongside buildings when he came to them.

And he thought about what he had been thinking about through most of the lovemaking: Sergeant Wilson, hero and shirt-lifting poofter. Shipped off to X by an embarrassed CO to escape the disgrace of a court-martial, he was willing to bet. Well, well! The admissions to X were certainly getting queerer and queerer all the time.

It had not escaped him that Langtry thought the new admission was a bit of all right. Perked her up no end, he had! Of course she didn’t believe what she’d read in his papers, no woman ever did—especially when the bloke was as manly and strong as Sergeant Wilson, a proper answer to an old maid’s prayers. The question: Was Sergeant Wilson the answer to Langtry’s prayers? Luce had thought for a long time that privilege was going to be Neil’s, but at the moment he was not so sure. He’d better do a bit of praying himself, that Langtry preferred a sergeant to a captain, a Wilson to a Parkinson. If she did, it would be a lot easier to do what he was planning to do. Make Langtry grovel.

He became aware that his balls ached all the way through to his teeth, and stopped in the lee of a deserted ward to urinate. But as usual the wretched stuff wouldn’t come; it always took him ages to manage to pee. He dallied as long as he dared, willing the stream to start, holding his despised prize tool between his fingers, wrinkling its skin back and forth in a quiet frenzy of desperation. No use. Another look at his watch told him there wasn’t any more time; he would have to endure the ache a few minutes more.

Part 3

1

Michael had been a patient in ward X for about two weeks when Sister Langtry first began to experience an odd feeling of premonition. Not a pleasant anticipation of pleasantness, but a morbid, crawling dread which had absolutely no basis in reality. The reality was the converse, a smooth new completeness. There were no undercurrents; everyone liked Michael, and Michael liked everyone. The men were relaxed, and certainly more comfortable, for Michael waited on them hand and foot, fetched and carried cheerfully. After all, he explained to her, he couldn’t read endlessly, he had his indolent periods on the beach, and he needed to move around with some purpose. So he mended the plumbing such as it was, hammered in nails, fixed things. There was a cushion sewn to the back of her office chair, courtesy of Michael; the floors almost gleamed; the dayroom was tidier.

Yet still her disquiet persisted. He is a catalyst of some kind, she thought; in his own nature and essence harmless, but in ward X, who knows? Yes, everyone liked him and he liked everyone. And there were no undercurrents. But ward X was different since his advent, though she could not discover what the difference was. Just an atmosphere.

The heat became oppressive, very still, and the air brooded; the slowest, most leisurely of movements produced rivers of sweat, and the waters of the ocean beyond the reef turned a sullen green, horizon smudged. With the full moon came the rain, two days of awesome steady downpour which laid the dust but brought mud instead. Mildew popped out on everything: mosquito nets, sheets, screens, books, boots, clothes, woodwork, bread. But with the beach unavailable, it saved the men from complete idleness, for Sister Langtry kept them all hard at it cleaning off the mildew with spirit-dampened rags. She issued an order that all boots and shoes must come off just inside the front or back door, yet still by some osmotic process the mud infiltrated everywhere into the ward, and that kept the men busy too, with buckets and mops and floor cloths.

Luckily there was nothing depressing about the rain itself, as it didn’t mourn the passing of the sun the way the tender, colder rains of higher latitudes did. As long as it didn’t set in, such rain as this almost had the power to exalt, filling the human mind with a vast impression of might. If it set in, as it would when the real monsoons came, its effect was worse than any other rain, for the power became remorseless and overwhelming, human beings mere scurrying impotent ants.

But this rain was too early to be the beginning of the monsoon, and when the rain cleared, even that drab unlovely collection of buildings called Base Fifteen looked unexpectedly beautiful: scrubbed, rinsed, swept.

Well, that’s that, thought Sister Langtry, feeling an enormous relief. All I was worrying about was rain! It always affects them this way. Affects me, too.

‘How silly,’ she said to Michael, handing him a bucket of muddy water.

He was putting the finishing touches on the sluice room after the swabbing party had downed tools and was taking a well-earned rest on the verandah.

‘What’s silly?’ he asked, tipping the water down the drain and wiping off the galvanized iron with a rag.

‘I’ve had a feeling there was trouble brewing, but I think all it was was rain brewing. After all this time in the tropics you’d think I’d know better.’ She leaned her back against the door jamb and watched him, the intent thoroughness with which every single task was done, the smooth roundedness of the whole.